I think the point is that if people wanted to play cartoon characters, they can play WoW.

D2 chars have more of a cartoon/plastic look than D3 ones. Maybe you got some image stuck in your brain of artworks or concept drawings.
D3 looks like a painting not like a cartoon and someone complaining about WoW-like cartoon graphics is the perfect example of retard bandwagon effect.

D2 chars have more of a cartoon/plastic look than D3 ones. Maybe you got some image stuck in your brain of artworks or concept drawings.
D3 looks like a painting not like a cartoon and someone complaining about WoW-like cartoon graphics is the perfect example of retard bandwagon effect.

The technology wasnt there, nor were the video cards and cpus when d2 was made to make it look cartoony. Its more grainy and dark like poe (not using "was" because you can still load up d2 and see for yourself). Is your comp good enough to play d3 with the graphics turned up? The graphics are very good but they are cartoony (like in tl2) in comparison to other games. Not sure why cartoony graphics are considered bad.

I think that these pictures look interesting, similarly to most 'What if...?' pieces of development. A more realistic art style, more open spaces, a different camera system, and what seems like Heaven as a playable environment. Nice to see.

However, I do not understand where the opportunity for comparisons come in.

As far as graphics are concerned, those pictures are most probably from a pre-alpha build. So nowhere near what finished Diablo III is. You just can't compare the two. What is more, those pictures are from 2005, Diablo III was released in 2012. A 7-year long gap is too big to allow credible comparisons in a technical department, as is the graphics department, so there is an additional reason why they shouldn't be compared.

Gameplay-wise, nobody knows what that possible Diablo III could have been, other than the people that worked on it, and even them, judging by Blizzard's usual creative process, would only have an idea of where they wanted the game to go, but a lot would most probably change as development continued. What is more, the team working on the game is not even the genuine Blizzard North, since most of that studio's people had left Blizzard two years prior to that 2005 stage of the game's development.

And as to whether the game would have been better or not if the original Blizzard North remained at their positions, who knows? Torchlight seems very good. And Hellgate - London seemed like a game with very good potential, but riddled with poor financial backing to allow for proper testing and support. Torchlight as well, despite its very good quality, could massively benefit from a bigger budget, the kind of which you can't easily find outside big studios. So maybe Diablo III from its original developers could be awesome, or could end-up a disappointment. No one is free of the possibility of developing a bad game. But the thing is, we'll never know. Things are the way they are, and no amount of speculation s going to change that. So we may as well enjoy what we have and try to make things even better in the future -developing better games as developers, and only buying good games as players-, instead of getting into fights over the past.